Let's Talk About Pokemon - Vulpix and Ninetales

037 - Vulpix

Well, uh. Here's a weird one to judge. On account of this Pokemon being me.

Now if I may put that side of me aside and instead put my Internet Critic hat on, Vulpix on its own may not be all THAT exciting, and this is definitely a criticism I'll be aiming at a fair few Pokemon going forward, in that I can appreciate a conventionally cute critter, but they often don't outright impress me. A successful design in my eyes, when it comes to creature-tamer designs, is one that can strike the right balance of appeal, uniqueness, and a strong concept. Not that this is a rigid metric I weigh against every single design, because you cannot boil down art to a simple math problem, so much as it's just the things I consider when critiquing these things.

If I were to go for more of a measured approach to this design: It's nice! A kitsune with six curly tails and an affinity for the fire elemental is sound enough, though I've found foxes tend to be associated with fire a lot, anyways. Maybe less so at the time Vulpix was first made, but still. Though I will definitely say that I think it's clever how this Pokemon very subtly hints to the fire motif without overtly being about fire in its design. A lot of fire types have fire on their body or a flame body pattern somewhere, and I think Vulpix does it well by being a fiery orange, and the way its head and tail curls almost calling to mind the way fire is artistically drawn in curls at times.

And I think a big part of Vulpix's appeal is how natural it feels. As Pokemon goes on, it steps away from natural-feeling designs to make the bodies of its pocket monsters more stylized. Not that one is inherently better than the other, but I do like this over a number of future canids we'll be seeing. Had I taken this more """Objective""" approach, Vulpix would probably at least earn an 8/10 or something.

...But """objective""" reviews are BORING! HOAXES! LIES! This thing is me and I am it and it makes me feel things that I don't know if I can adequately explain in just words, at least words that aren't just "Theta Delta". Vulpix is disqualified for being Gender/10. But I'll give it a score anyway to keep consistent.

Personal Score: 10/10

038 - Ninetales

Anyway, here's a Pokemon I can be a bit more normal about. NInetales definitely picks up being pretty over being cute, and it does so while still having a nice physicality to it. It just also does feel a bit more played-straight. Is that just me? When you think of the legendary nine-tailed fox, you would think of something that looks along the lines of Ninetales. It loses the curls in favor of straighter tails, the nice bun of curls is gone in favor of a big unruly bush atop its head. I like and appreciate Ninetales in a lot of the same ways I like Vulpix, but it's definitely not shocking. Not tugging at my brain in specific ways that would make me go coocoo for it like Vulpix has. Still solid, but again, I'm more normal about it, and being normal about something is at least a tinge more boring.

Personal Score: 8.5/10

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